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Responses of soil fungal community to the sandy grassland restoration in Horqin Sandy Land, northern China

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Abstract

Sandy grassland restoration is a vital process including re-structure of soils, restoration of vegetation, and soil functioning in arid and semi-arid regions. Soil fungal community is a complex and critical component of soil functioning and ecological balance due to its roles in organic matter decomposition and nutrient cycling following sandy grassland restoration. In this study, soil fungal community and its relationship with environmental factors were examined along a habitat gradient of sandy grassland restoration: mobile dunes (MD), semi-fixed dunes (SFD), fixed dunes (FD), and grassland (G). It was found that species abundance, richness, and diversity of fungal community increased along with the sandy grassland restoration. The sequences analysis suggested that most of the fungal species (68.4 %) belonged to the phylum of Ascomycota. The three predominant fungal species were Pleospora herbarum, Wickerhamomyces anomalus, and Deconica Montana, accounting for more than one fourth of all the 38 species. Geranomyces variabilis was the subdominant species in MD, Pseudogymnoascus destructans and Mortierella alpine were the subdominant species in SFD, and P. destructans and Fungi incertae sedis were the dominant species in FD and G. The result from redundancy analysis (RDA) and stepwise regression analysis indicated that the vegetation characteristics and soil properties explain a significant proportion of the variation in the fungal community, and aboveground biomass and C:N ratio are the key factors to determine soil fungal community composition during sandy grassland restoration. It was suggested that the restoration of sandy grassland combined with vegetation and soil properties improved the soil fungal diversity. Also, the dominant species was found to be alternative following the restoration of sandy grassland ecosystems.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (41401620 and 41271007), “One Hundred Talent” Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y451H31001), and Major Scientific and Technological Special Project of Inner Mongolia (Y439K71001). We thank all the members of Naiman Desertification Research Station, CAS, for their help in our field and laboratory work. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Naiman Desertification Research Station, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute (CAREERI), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), 320# Donggang West Road, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Shao-Kun Wang, Xiao-An Zuo, Xue-Yong Zhao, Yu-Qiang Li, Xin Zhou, Peng Lv, Yong-Qing Luo & Jian-Ying Yun

  2. Laboratory of Stress Ecophysiology and Biotechnology (LSEB), CAREERI, CAS, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Shao-Kun Wang, Xiao-An Zuo, Xue-Yong Zhao & Yu-Qiang Li

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  1. Shao-Kun Wang
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Correspondence to Shao-Kun Wang.

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Wang, SK., Zuo, XA., Zhao, XY. et al. Responses of soil fungal community to the sandy grassland restoration in Horqin Sandy Land, northern China. Environ Monit Assess 188, 21 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-5031-3

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